o great naturalists
whose crowning work we are here to commemorate.

Your brilliant work in natural history and geography, and as one
of the founders of the theory of Evolution by Natural Selection,
is universally honoured and has often received public recognition,
as in the awards of the Darwin and Royal Medals of the Royal
Society, and of our Medal in 1892.

To-day, in asking you to accept the first Darwin-Wallace Medal, we
are offering you of your own, for it is you, equally with your
great colleague, who created the occasion we celebrate.

There is nothing in the history of science more delightful or more
noble than the story of the relations between yourself and Mr.
Darwin, as told in the correspondence now so fully published--the
story of a generous rivalry in which each discoverer strives to
exalt the claims of the other. We know that Mr. Darwin wrote
(April 6th, 1859): "You cannot tell how much I admire your spirit
in the manner in which you have taken all that was done about
publishing our papers. I had actually written a letter to you
stating that I would not publish anything before you had
published." Then came the letters of Hooker and Lyell, leading to
the publication of the joint papers which they communicated.

You, on your side, always gave the credit to him, and
underestimated your own position as the co-discoverer. I need only
refer to your calling your great exposition of the joint theory
"Darwinism," as the typical example of your generous emphasising
of the claims of your illustrious fellow-worker.

It was a remarkable and momentous coincidence that both you and he
should have independently arrived at the idea of Natural Selection
after reading Malthus's book, and a most happy inspiration that
you should have selected Mr. Darwin as the naturalist to whom to
communicate your discovery. That theory, in spite of changes in
the scientific fashion of the moment, you have always
unflinchingly maintained, and still uphold as unshaken by all
attacks.

Like Mr. Darwin, you, if I may say so, are above all a naturalist,
a student and lover of living animals and plants, as shown in
later years by your enthusiasm and success in gardening. It is to
such men, those who have learnt the ways of Nature, as Nature
really is in the open, to whom your doctrine of